


Exile

by BDBriggs



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Gen, it's got ryan haywood in it so if you're new don't read it but if you want to reminisce it's here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23702515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BDBriggs/pseuds/BDBriggs
Summary: IMPORTANT:I wrote this before Ryan’s ugly parting from the company. I don’t condone what he’s done, at all, whatsoever, but I don’t want to erase the works I’ve created because of his poor choices. Please avoid this if you don't want to read anything with him in it.***Execution is too kind for the Mad King.Ryan tunes out Geoff’s flowery speech. It’s all for ceremony, for the "rightful" King to show his kingdom the sweet taste of revenge, to assure his people the Mad King’s reign is over. Execution is too kind for the Mad King; his punishment is exile.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50





	Exile

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the recent-ish video where AH checks out the new nether update for minecraft. I immediately headed over to the minecraft wiki and read about all the changes. This fic is based off of reading what are basically patch notes, rather than playing the update myself, so take it with a grain of salt. I also took some liberties with minecraft mechanics.

Execution is too kind for the Mad King.

Ryan snarls at the thought, at the words proclaimed boldly into the open-air courtyard. The whole damn kingdom is in attendance today, he thinks, judging by the shouts and jeers of the crowd behind him. Achievement City’s grand throne room is packed to the brim, citizens spilling out of the courtyard and into the forest beyond. He can hear them all nonetheless; the walls may be high, but they do nothing to keep out the roar of the angry mob.

Geoff sits before him, tall upon the golden throne, jeweled crown upon his head. Jack stands at his right, hand upon his sword, as if Ryan will somehow escape from his heavy chains and manacles to fight the King once more. Michael stands to the left of the throne, arms crossed, his face set in a deep scowl. He and Jack are both dressed in full suits of diamond armor, beacons of righteousness and symbols of protection.

Ryan wishes he could spit on them, but alas, they thought to gag him before bringing him out.

Gavin stands to Michael’s side, dressed in his green archer’s leathers and gaudy golden jester boots. Every time Ryan so much as shifts, Gavin’s hand jerks towards his bow. And Ryan would love to play with his food, really he would, but he’s exhausted, and he’s felt the sting of those arrows before. He is careful to sit still to avoid aggravating the twitchy archer. Much the opposite of Gavin, Ray looks bored halfway to sleep with the proceedings. He stands beside Jack, dressed in his usual suit and rose-embroidered cape, expression flat.

Ryan tunes out Geoff’s flowery speech. It’s all for ceremony, for the _rightful_ _King_ to show his kingdom the sweet taste of revenge, to assure his people the Mad King’s reign is over. Execution is too kind for the Mad King; his punishment is exile.

To the nether.

Ryan would have preferred the noose. The noose is a slow and painful way to go, sure, at least compared to the sword. Compared to the nether, however, the noose would be a blessing.

To die in the nether is to die slowly, withering away while beset by monsters on all sides. There are all too many ways to die in the nether, and none of them are kind. Ryan may die by the hands of the pigmen or endermen; he may wither away or be roasted by blazes or ghasts. If he somehow manages to survive the hordes of monsters in the nether, he will starve. Without tools he cannot tunnel quickly, and the floor of the nether is hot and painful to the touch, so he cannot dig comfortably with his hands. The endless flames may burn him alive if he is particularly unlucky. If the floor gives way, or if he falls, or if the ceiling gives way above him, he may be swallowed by lava.

He would have preferred the noose, as undignified an end as it may be.

A sudden increase in the shouts behind him draws Ryan from his thoughts with a jolt. Gavin reaches for his bow at his movement, thankfully steadied by Michael’s hand on his arm. Geoff descends from the throne to stand before him.

“Farewell,” Geoff murmurs, somber and sad. Ryan knows it must pain him deeply to cast one of his closest friends into such a horrific end. But what he’s done is unforgivable, and Geoff only does this to assure his kingdom’s wellbeing. It would be fair to say that if he were to be exiled from the kingdom with any means of return, he would do so with force and attempt to fight for the crown once more. He understands the decision.

It doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Ryan simply nods at Geoff, incapable of saying any of this aloud gagged as he is. Besides, he will not give anyone—not Geoff, not the court, not the peasants—the satisfaction of seeing him broken. If he must break, he will do so when he is out of sight forever. Not now, not here.

Jack and Michael step forward, then, each of them grasping one of the heavy chains and one of Ryan’s arms. They march him to the nether portal constructed to one side of the courtyard, amid the deafening roar of the crowd. Ryan looks up, feasting his eyes on the bright blue sky, the warm rays of the sun, the deep green trees, before the nether portal consumes his vision. Only Jack follows him inside, armed with his sword, a diamond pickaxe, and a potion to return him to the overworld.

Once on the other side, Jack removes the chains from his wrists and ankles and throws him to the ground. Ryan stays there, not wanting to aggravate the man by moving. He listens to Jack destroy the portal block by block, his hope crumbling along with the obsidian. Jack does not say farewell; Ryan hears him drink the potion, and then there is nothing, nothing but the crackle of flames and bubbling of lava to keep him company.

Ryan picks himself up off the hot ground, settling into a kneeling position. He lets his shoulders slump; there is no one to see him here, no one to judge him for a moment of weakness.

He is alone.

The first thing he does is untie the gag and hurl it as far away as he can. The blasted thing was tied so tightly it cut the corners of his mouth, and it was on for so long that his throat is now parched. He winces at the realization that he has no water to soothe it, nor will he ever have water again. It sets his brain running frantically. He will never have food again, unless he finds mushrooms—never again will he taste meat, or bread, or fresh vegetables from the farm. Never again will he feel warm blankets wrapped around him, or a cool breeze on his skin. Never again will he speak to another person, or spend time with his animals, or pass the time with a hunt.

The thoughts swirling around his skull magnify and fill the empty cavern around him, churning angrily like a raging storm. A dam breaks and Ryan weeps, crying in great gulping sobs. He is alone, alone, _alone_, and he will die here hurting and afraid and alone. Holding himself upright becomes too much, and he collapses to a crumpled heap on the charred ground. He sobs until there are no more tears, until he feels empty and numb to the world around him. He thinks he sleeps for a while, drifting in a sea of meaninglessness, his thoughts and emotions so thoroughly spent that they are far beyond his grasp.

Ryan pulls himself together slowly, bit by bit, crumb by crumb. When he feels ready to face his fate, he gathers himself onto his knees once more, gazing out at the hellscape around him. He was left in a spacious cavern. It is surprisingly empty, he thinks, with only two fountains of lava and a handful of quartz veins, a single glowstone formation on the ceiling, far beyond his reach. No monsters have traveled here, yet, but the space is large enough that they will come eventually.

He stands unsteadily, knowing he should move. It is difficult to _do_ anything. Ryan knows he will die here eventually; it is only a question of _how _and _when_. He could throw himself into the lava and be over with it, sure, but the thought sits uncomfortably in his chest somewhere.

He is not ready to give up. The realization slides in slowly, like molasses, creeping in bit by bit until Ryan makes his choice. He takes a step, then another, and another, marching slowly but deliberately out of the cavern. He will not give up. He does not know what he will do, but he knows he will not give up.

Ryan wanders. Time eludes him; there is no sun, no cycle of spawning monsters, no clock to tell him the passage of time. He picks up what mushrooms he finds, he walks, and he avoids monsters. It must be many days of wandering before he stumbles upon a familiar sight.

Dark Achievement City.

He spies smooth stone in the distance, a towering monolith reaching to the ceiling. His first instinct is to run towards it, towards the familiar materials of the overworld, but he knows it would be no use. Geoff told him they had blocked the city off; high obsidian walls now tower around it. And even if he did manage to build a way over the walls, the city was emptied before his exile. He will find nothing useful there.

Ryan sets his jaw. So far, he’s done nothing. He has wandered the hell that is his exile doing nothing but feel sorry for himself. But what can he do? He is a king without a throne, a man without a purpose.

The answer he finds is simple; he must change both of these things. Ryan rolls up his sleeves, grits his teeth, and gets to work.

He wages war against the pigmen. He’s gathered a nice stock of mushrooms by this point; they offer little sustenance, but they heal his bloody knuckles and whatever wounds he gains in the fighting. The pigmen have gold, which he hoards like a magpie, and it is a glorious day when he finally finds golden tools. He digs through netherrack with a golden shovel to build himself a shelter and uses golden swords to slaughter the masses of pigmen and endermen.

The nether fortresses give him more pause. He has no milk, nothing to keep himself from withering, so he must be careful. He lures ghasts as bait and sneaks into the fortresses while the withers seek revenge and the wither skeletons scramble to fix their broken walls, using the precious little time to steal netherwart and to raid chests for supplies. Endermen occasionally place blocks stolen from the overworld in these chests; Ryan finds enough wood to make a crafting table, a sizeable amount of dirt, and several seeds. Without water the seeds are useless, but he keeps them anyways.

And then something strange happens.

A pigmen approaches him out in the open nether, slow and hesitant. The way it walks is nothing like the mindless amble they usually exhibit, and a far cry from the laser-focused march they do when angered. Ryan waits for it to approach him, and when it does, it _kneels_.

A zombie pigman kneels before him, unprompted, in the nether. No one from the overworld could have trained him, if training a pigman was possible in the first place. It takes several seconds of shocked staring for Ryan to realize this isn’t a cruel joke. No one is here to laugh.

He pulls the pigman to its feet and hands it a golden sword from his own stockpile. The pigman holds the sword upright stiffly, gazing at him blankly from behind the gleaming blade. It does not move. When Ryan moves away, it follows him, seeming content to stay by his side as long as he walks on even ground.

When they encounter more pigmen, they, too, kneel at Ryan’s feet. He runs out of swords to give them, but he finds if he tugs them to their feet, they follow him. After some time they encounter an enderman, and the horde he’s amassed swarms the thing, slaughtering it in seconds. Ryan takes the eye it drops and praises them, handing red-spotted mushrooms to those who were injured in the fight. Together, they press on.

Ryan travels until he has an army. It takes time, but he realizes after a while that the pigmen are seeking him out. Their numbers swell, and Ryan’s power grows along with them. Together they take on nether fortresses and ghasts. Eventually the withers skeletons and blazes kneel before him and join him. Armed with blazes, even the withers cannot stand a chance. They have no legs to kneel with, but they do their best to bow before him, heads dipping low, and they follow him, too.

Their journey ends at a large island surrounded by a wide moat of lava. Ryan uses a golden shovel to mine and place netherrack, hoping to make a bridge to cross the lava. The pigmen and wither skeletons do him one better and pick up blocks of nether-brick, building a wide and tall bridge faster than Ryan could have even with an abundance of overworld tools. He eyes them carefully, but none of them ever stray close enough to the lava to fall in. The withers and blazes keep the ghasts away until the ghasts float above Ryan aimlessly, no longer bothering to attack.

Only the endermen remain resolute.

Perhaps they remember him from his reign in the overworld. He often slew them for their eyes, he reminisces. It doesn’t matter why, he thinks; they hate him _now_, and the present is all he has with him. The past remains locked behind bars, chained away in the deep recesses of his mind. His army has little success in this new fight; faced with increasingly large numbers of teleporting enemies, the pigmen begin to fall.

Ryan picks up his sword and joins the fight, letting the construction continue behind him.

They fight for a time that might have been weeks or months. Regardless, it is a long time in which Ryan’s pigmen painstakingly build a castle upon the netherrack island, the bridge having been completed, while Ryan helps the withers, wither skeletons, and blazes wage war on the endermen. The battles are long and intense and sweaty; the heat of the nether has slowly become more bearable to him over time, but fighting so close to lava is exhausting and leaves him overheated more often than not.

In one such long battle, Ryan sways a little from heat exhaustion. He eats a few mushrooms, but they do little to clear the haze from his vision. An enderman seizes advantage of his weakness and strikes. Ryan’s lucky enough to see it coming, but his limbs are heavy with exhaustion, his movements sluggish. He parries once, twice, and upon the next strike his golden sword shatters. One golden shard flies back into Ryan’s face and slices a line across his left eye and cheek. He falls to his knees with a pained yell, clutching his ruined eye with one hand, the sounds of battle fading to a cacophonous blur.

Ryan looks up at the endermen with his remaining eye. He will not break—not for Geoff’s court, not for a nameless enderman on the battlefield—and lifts his lips in a snarl. Instead of striking him down, however, the enderman grasps him by the wrist and tugs his hand away from his ruined eye. His flesh burns at the contact, white-hot, and a ragged scream tears itself from Ryan’s throat.

The enderman peers into his good eye, unmoving, uncaring of his agony.

_We will not kneel before you_, it whispers, despite having no mouth to do so. _We will not kneel before the Mad King of the Overworld_.

Pain flares, beginning at his arm where the enderman grips him tightly, racing outward and spreading through his body in arcs of lightning. Ryan screams again, louder, and several endermen scream along with him.

_We will not kneel!_ The enderman repeats. _But we will fight alongside you as equals. _The enderman draws closer, until all Ryan can see is one bright purple eye set in the black void of its face. _We will not serve you, Mad King, but we will fight alongside you. We are not yours to command, but we will respect your wishes. This war ends here, today. The only further wars we fight are against the Overworld. _Its eyes flash. _Do not give us reason to abandon this agreement. _

And then the enderman is gone. Ryan crumples to a heap on the charred ground, bleeding and weeping in agony. He is vaguely aware of being moved as the pigmen carry him off the battlefield. Then the world around him ceases to exist for a time and he floats, drifting aimlessly in the foggy sky of the nether. He dreams of bright glowstone lanterns, of burbling fountains of lava, of courtyards lined with mushrooms and netherwart, of halls filled with pigmen.

There is a dragon in his dreams, a dark and menacing figure filling the cavern above him. He calls out to it and it turns, the inky shroud around it falling away to reveal a ghast lazily floating around alongside him. They float together, drifting in a sea of nothingness. The ghast lowers itself and Ryan drapes himself upon its back, content to let it carry him where it chooses. It wanders until Ryan remembers his name, his purpose, and his new army, until he remembers the endermen and the strange agreement they’d come to.

The ghast drops him off at his castle; Ryan falls until he lands in a makeshift bed, where he startles awake and looks around. It’s disorienting. His vision is changed with the lack of his eye, all depth perception gone. His wounds are nearly healed, but patches of his skin feel oddly raw. Looking down at himself he sees the reason; his right arm is stained black, forever warped by the enderman’s touch. A glance at his left leg reveals it is the same. He feels around his neck and face; a patch around his missing eye feels to be the same odd, smooth texture. His eye is gone, replaced by something slightly larger and much harder than a human eye. It gives him a bit of a headache, but the blackened skin around it seems to have widened to compensate.

Ryan takes stock of the nether-brick building around him. There is a window on one wall, made of air rather than glass, and outlined by nether brick fences. He stands and gazes out at the castle below him. It’s only partly finished, but already grand in its size and glory. Pigmen, withers, wither skeletons, and blazes amble about in the hallways and courtyards, most carrying nether brick building supplies, some carrying gleaming golden swords. A few ghasts drift aimlessly in the cavern above. The endermen are nowhere to be found, but he can feel them out there.

There is much work to be done on the castle, Ryan decides, and he can help to do it. So he squares his shoulders, pushes up his ragged and blood-stained sleeves, and gets to work.

Work on the castle and the surrounding areas never really ceases. Ryan helps when he feels inclined, directing the endless additions, sometimes ordering the pigmen to change something to his liking, other times letting them build as they please. Much of his time is spent at a brewing stand gifted to him by the endermen shortly after the end of their war. Ryan dips his head and thanks the enderman who gives it to him; it dips its head and teleports away without a word.

The hard thing in his ruined eye socket is an ender eye, he discovers, using a shiny golden sword to see his reflection. He sprinkles a little blaze powder into it on a whim and suddenly he can _see_ again, depth and color and everything. It brings with it a new kind of vision, too, something different and unfamiliar to Ryan. He’s not sure exactly what it is, but he can see other endermen even when they’re not there, and he can see _magic_, too, can see it swirling around in his veins, shimmering along his blackened skin.

He orders the pigmen to build him a new crown; they have a little trouble recreating it per his orders, having never seen a crown before, so he helps them shape it. After several attempts they manage to get it to fit his head and look mostly symmetrical. Ryan wears it everywhere but to bed.

Magic is a fascinating thing, he discovers. He experiments with mushrooms and netherwart, both of which they have in abundance, as well as blaze powder and blaze rods, glowstone and ghast tears, and poison supplied by the withers. He imbues his crown and tools with magic, enchanting them more effectively than if he had a whole enchanting library set up in the overworld. When he grows more confident, he manipulates the overworld seeds and plants he found in the fortresses, changing them to grow in dirt even without water. He tastes bread and fresh vegetables again, and it is _divine_. They aren’t quite the same without water, but they taste better than mushrooms, and the variety in his diet helps him grow stronger.

Spurred by the success of the enchantments and the seeds, Ryan experiments on more things. The bridge is paved with soul sand; he doesn’t leave the castle much, and if he does, his boots are enchanted to carry him through the sand at a normal speed. He adds ghast tears to the soul sand, then blaze powder, hoping to slow those who cross it even more. He’s satisfied with the strength of his enchantment when he tests it on the pigmen. It’s a bit of a hindrance to them, but they don’t seem to mind, so he leaves the enchanted soul sand where it is.

The castle has gardens, now, and he revels in the bright colors of them, so unlike anything else seen in the nether. There is _green_, and while it isn’t the deep emerald color he remembers of the trees, the leafy crops still bring him immeasurable joy. He captures a mooshroom, too, harnessing it in a golden bridle and naming him Edgar, just for old time’s sake. Edgar roams freely amongst the crops, occasionally munching on them, but Ryan cannot bring himself to be angry at the creature.

Eventually Ryan begins experimenting on the plants again, hoping to increase the yield of each individual plant. He has the best success with the mushrooms. It must be because they could grow in the nether already, he thinks, and the mushrooms grow abnormally large, filling several halls quite accidentally. They don’t all taste good, however, so Ryan goes back to his normal-sized mushrooms for food. The big mushrooms _look_ pretty, though, so he keeps a few of them, transferring them to the outer courtyards where they don’t get in the way as much, dumping the rest into lava to get rid of it.

The pigmen take an interest in his magical crops, much to his dismay. His magically changed carrots get stolen mysteriously while he sleeps, so he never gets the chance to see what the enchanted carrots do. And he never finds the culprit, either. The carrots seem to disappear out of thin air. To avoid such a horrible thing happening again, Ryan halts his efforts in experimenting with the plants. Growing things in the nether is enough of a feat, he thinks.

Endermen become a common sight in his castle, although they never stay long. Some bring him items as gifts; in return, he offers them respite in his castle and any supplies they could need. Many of them bring him dirt, which he uses to expand his gardens further. Occasionally they bring him some kind of stone or wood, and sometimes sand or gravel. He uses the sand to grow sugarcane, carefully tending the first plant from the single stalk he’d preserved, until he has a sizeable farm of sugarcane, too. He weeps the first time he tastes sugar in an age. If he had milk and eggs he could make cake, but he contents himself with eating a little sugar as a treat now and again.

The nether changes around him, bit by bit, block by block. Ryan is unsure if it’s his magic, his brewing, or his farm that does it, but the nether around his island change. Similar to his results when he experimented in growing larger mushrooms to sustain him and his army, suddenly tall fungal forests begin sprouting. These warped forests are nothing like the mushroom forests from home, but the bright red and blue colors awe him. He watches them grow from the walls of his castle.

The soul sand changes things, too. His soul sand bridge had been normal when he left it, retreating inside the castle to work with his plants, until suddenly he discovers it burns _blue_. The flames hurt much worse than normal flames, too; Ryan takes care to warn the blazes and ghasts not to set it alight by accident, although it ignites occasionally from the heat of the lava below.

His magical soul sand spreads, too, the magic skipping along and changing other soul sand valleys quickly. Lava in these places cools into towering basalt columns. A layer of soil then forms from the crumbling basalt. Somehow skeletons make their way to these places; Ryan marches to one such valley with his army behind him and the skeletons kneel before him. Satisfied, Ryan invites them to his castle. They refuse to leave the soul sand valleys, but they send him gifts of bows and arrows, and bone meal for his farms.

The crimson and warped forests grow taller, spread further, and vines begin to sweep down from the trees. Odd little shroomlights grow in some places, illuminating the forests from within. As living matter falls to the forest floor and decays, a layer of nylium forms, resembling the grass of the overworld, but considerably more colorful. Ryan discovers that the planks from the odd trees of the forests can be used just like wood from the overworld. Large sections of his castle are then rebuilt using these colorful planks. Ryan also adds a throne room, with a large throne of crimson and gold, ragged banners swaying slightly around him, soul fire torches and lanterns illuminating the space brightly. He likes the blue of the soul fire, but ultimately decides to keep the bright glowstone chandeliers, for they were a commodity back in the overworld.

Several new monsters appear, evolving under Ryan’s nose while he busied himself with alchemy and magic. He isn’t sure if he helped create them or if they evolved on their own, but piglins and hoglins appear in the forests. Ryan is eager to make friends with the piglins, trading with them and acquiring several hoglins for his castle, although he is careful to keep them away from the crops. He decides the pigmen may be healing, and possibly due to his missing enchanted carrots, but as long as the piglins work alongside him, he doesn’t particularly care if he has pigmen or piglins in his castle.

He discovers ancient debris, too, under lava blocks on one of the lowest levels of the nether. He can see it with his ender eye easily, so he leads expeditions to find more of it. Eventually the blazes discover that they can see it, too—how, Ryan is uncertain, but if it gains him a supply of the stuff, he supposes it doesn’t matter. It’s impossible to use a live blaze as a test subject, anyhow; the things still light him on fire if he gets too close, much to his dismay.

The endermen whisper to him a way to use the debris. He makes netherite scraps from the stuff, turning the scraps into ingots, and the ingots into tools. The endermen kindly bring him a full suit of diamond armor and a diamond sword, which he upgrades with the netherite into a truly magnificent set of armor. It seems the endermen are eager to prepare him for war.

Ryan doesn’t quite catch on to the implications of that thought until later, when the pigmen report seeing _humans_ in the nether. The news shocks him to his core. Humans? In the nether? His army hasn’t seen humans in the nether since they discovered _him_. Ryan thinks the entire kingdom surrounding Achievement City abandoned their work in the nether entirely. After defeating the ender dragon, they hardly needed to return other than to gather materials for potions. He thinks they haven’t set foot in the nether since his exile.

_Since he died_, he thinks bitterly. The overworld has forgotten the reign of the Mad King, perhaps forgotten his very existence. And those who remember him would be comforted by the thought that he _died_ in the nether, beset on all sides by fire and brimstone and death.

Ryan grins. He has defied the odds. He has risen again, a king upon a throne, an army at his back. He is a man with a purpose once more, and his purpose is to go to _war_.

The endermen whisper to him more frequently, now. They show him where a single nether portal lays, far away from his castle. A handful of adventurers journey outward from it, slaying Ryan’s pigmen and several piglins. Ryan knows he must play his hand carefully; if he shows his cards too soon, he risks the destruction of everything he so carefully built. Worse, he risks the adventurers fleeing to the overworld and destroying the portal.

So he lures them to his castle.

Crumb by crumb, he leads them to him. He sprinkles tiny pockets of ancient debris in the area between him and the portal. He relocates a small village of piglins roughly midway between them, hoping to entice the adventurers with the promise of gold and the ability to barter. A soul sand valley lies between the piglin village and his castle, and he hopes fervently that the towering basalt columns will entice them further.

The adventurers do not travel to him all at once. Humans are hesitant creatures, especially in the nether, but they seem to have forgotten fear in their awe of the new world around them. Ryan sees them with his ender eye and confirms that many are his former fellows. He recognizes Michael immediately, bear-skin hood drawn up over his face. Lindsay walks alongside him, resplendent in a dress lined with bright feathers. Matt is there, too, and while Ryan wasn’t overly familiar with Geoff’s architect, he’d recognize the face anywhere. There are several humans that Ryan doesn’t recognize, but the others in the group are obviously familiar with them.

Ryan’s heart aches with longing as he watches them smile and joke and laugh together. He ignores it; he will not be soft when revenge is within his reach.

Others join the adventurers after a long wait. Gavin enters the fray, armed with his bow and arrows, bounding across the new ground with enthusiasm. Jack and Geoff follow more sedately, picking their way through the warped forest, and Ryan smiles to see them both look well even if they’re much older, hair going grey.

Their grey hair gives Ryan pause. The shiniest material he’s had since his exile is gold, and he cannot see the color of his face or hair in such a reflection. He wonders if his hair is going grey, too. Ryan draws his sword to look at his appearance. He wears the strongest armor that can be made, his golden crown placed atop the netherite helmet. His former clothes, his suit jacket and kilt, are still visible beneath the armor. They are little more than rags at this point, he notes with a frown, tattered and bloodstained as they are. He secures them carefully to his armor, hoping they will last long enough for his former fellows to recognize him.

At long last they arrive before Ryan’s castle, openly gaping at its magnificence. The denizens of his castle barricade themselves behind seemingly immovable walls, taking care to stay quiet as the adventurers cross the soul sand bridge and walk inside. They find him seated on his golden throne, resplendent in his netherite armor, smiling widely. He watches in satisfaction as they freeze and gape upon seeing him.

Ryan’s grin turns shark-like, menacing and full of teeth. A flick of his wrist and two dozen wither skeletons march into the room from behind him. They surround Ryan’s throne, utterly silent, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

“Welcome!” Ryan greets, spreading his hands to bring attention to the richness of his throne room. None of his former fellows move, but he can see their eyes flit around as they take in the blue fire, the throne similar to the seat in Achievement City, the wither skeleton guards around him. Only Geoff’s eyes never leave him, and it is satisfying to note the frustration and fear swimming in his expression. Ryan steeples his hands in front of him, chest swelling with pride. They had to _gag_ him to keep him quiet, back in the courtyard, but he has shocked them all into silence with a single word.

This is _everything_ he ever wished for. He has his former fellows at his mercy, too stunned and afraid to move or speak, he has an army and a magnificent castle, he has gardens and enchantments and magic to enrich his life. He has won the game they thought finished, armed only with patience and the inability to lay down and die. All he needs now is for them to recognize his victory.

“Kneel,” Ryan demands. “Kneel or lose your lives where you stand.”

It takes a moment of hesitance, but the court and king of Achievement City drop to their knees before him, bowing their heads. Ryan laughs, then, bright and delighted. This is _his_ castle, _his_ court. He has the power, here, the power to strike his enemies down where they stand. No one from the overworld would ever know what happened; some might come looking, and he could lure _them_ to their deaths, too. The Mad King laughs and laughs, the sound echoing off of the high ceiling, off the cavernous spaces in the nether, carrying through the tunnels and into the piglin villages, into the heavily armed nether fortresses. The Nether is his kingdom. All within it must kneel to him eventually.

It is _good_ to be King.

**Author's Note:**

> Boy I sure do like commas, don't I? I tried to get rid of as many as I could. Apologies for the slow and halting way the narration works because of the multitude of fucking commas.


End file.
